by Mary Balogh
Dear Reader,
Beyond the Sunrise, first published in 1992, is very special to me. I had already written almost thirty Regency romances, character-driven comedies of manners, all set in England. I was comfortable in the genre. But then I had an idea for something a bit different, something that would involve the Napoleonic Wars. I had been doing research into the Peninsular Wars in Spain and Portugal, and I was hooked.
The story is set in the same era as most of my others, and it begins in England when the hero and heroine first meet as young teenagers and enjoy a sweet romance before they are forced apart—she is the daughter of an exiled French count while he is the illegitimate son of an earl. But the story then moves to Portugal a number of years later. Robert Blake is now a tough, seasoned captain of an infantry regiment and an occasional spy under direct orders from the future Duke of Wellington. Joana da Fonte (formerly Jeanne Morisette) is the widow of a Portuguese nobleman and also a spy—something for which her French background makes her a prime candidate.
The story involves spying, intrigue, revenge, and betrayal, and it is the most action-packed of my books. I absolutely loved writing it, even though it took me well outside my comfort zone. It is character-driven and tells a passionate love story, just as all my books do, but it is a great deal more than just that, and I am delighted to see it being published again so many years later.
I do hope you will enjoy reading it in this lovely new edition, whether it be for the first time or as a reread from many years ago.
Mary Balogh
PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF MARY BALOGH
Beyond the Sunrise
“Thoroughly enjoyable.”
—New York Times bestselling author Janelle Taylor
“Balogh’s . . . epic love story is a winner . . . absorbing reading right up until the end.”
—Publishers Weekly
“High intrigue, daring exploits, a passionate love affair, what more could you want in a romance? Balogh gives us a humdinger of a tale set during the Napoleonic Wars. Great fun. Highly recommended.”
—Manderley Magazine
“Beyond the Sunrise is an utterly absorbing, powerful tale of a love that was once doomed and yet blooms again amidst the intrigue and ordeal of war. With infinite care and deft plotting, Ms. Balogh spins an intricate tale with the skill of a master weaver. She draws you into the era by evoking the aura of the war and the passionate emotions of her characters. If you have never read another book by Mary Balogh, then Beyond the Sunrise will be your introduction to a writer of remarkable talents.”
—RT Reviews
Longing
“Balogh capture[s] the allure of the land and the culture of the proud people of Wales . . . a very different sort of historical romance. Ms. Balogh’s writing has a very lyrical quality to it, which draws out the feelings of yearning so that the reader can palpably sense them . . . pretty powerful.”
—The Hope Chest Reviews
“A particular favorite of mine.”
—The Romance Reader
FURTHER PRAISE FOR AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR MARY BALOGH
“Once you start a Mary Balogh book, you won’t be able to stop reading.”
—New York Times bestselling author Susan Elizabeth Phillips
“Mary Balogh has the gift of making a relationship seem utterly real and utterly compelling.”
—Mary Jo Putney
“Winning, witty, and engaging . . . fulfilled all of my romantic fantasies.”
—New York Times bestselling author Teresa Medeiros
“Mary Balogh just keeps getting better and better . . . interesting characters and great stories to tell . . . well worth your time.”
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Mary Balogh is a superb author whose narrative voice comments on the characters and events of her novel in an ironic tone reminiscent of Jane Austen.”
—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
“Mary Balogh reaches deep and touches the heart.”
—New York Times bestselling author Joan Johnston
“A writer whose books belong on every romance shelf.”
—RT Reviews
ALSO BY MARY BALOGH
THE SURVIVORS’ CLUB SERIES
The Proposal
The Arrangement
The Escape
Only Enchanting
THE HUXTABLE SERIES
First Comes Marriage
Then Comes Seduction
At Last Comes Love
Seducing an Angel
A Secret Affair
THE SIMPLY SERIES
Simply Unforgettable
Simply Love
Simply Magic
Simply Perfect
THE BEDWYN SAGA
Slightly Married
Slightly Wicked
Slightly Scandalous
Slightly Tempted
Slightly Sinful
Slightly Dangerous
THE BEDWYN PREQUELS
One Night for Love
A Summer to Remember
THE MISTRESS TRILOGY
More Than a Mistress
No Man’s Mistress
The Secret Mistress
THE WEB SERIES
The Gilded Web
Web of Love
The Devil’s Web
CLASSICS
The Ideal Wife
The Secret Pearl
A Precious Jewel
A Christmas Promise
Dark Angel/
Lord Carew’s Bride
The Famous Heroine/
The Plumed Bonnet
A Christmas Bride/
Christmas Beau
The Temporary Wife/
A Promise of Spring
A Counterfeit Betrothal/
The Notorious Rake
Irresistible
A Matter of Class
Under the Mistletoe
Longing
Signet Eclipse
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Published by Signet Eclipse, an imprint of New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC. Previously published in an Onyx edition.
First Signet Eclipse Printing, February 2015
Copyright © Mary Balogh, 1992
Map copyright © Meighan Cavanaugh, 2014
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:
Balogh, Mary.
Beyond the sunrise/Mary Balogh.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-698-15611-1
1. First loves—Fiction. 2. Man-woman relationships—Fiction.
I. Title.
PR6052.A465B49 2015
823'.914—dc23 2014035061
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places,
and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
Contents
Letter to the Readers
Praise
Also by MARY BALOGH
Title page
Copyright page
Map
ENGLAND, 1799
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
PORTUGAL AND SPAIN, 1810
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Historical Note
Excerpt from Only a Promise
About the Author
ENGLAND,
1799
1
THE entertainment in progress at Haddington Hall in Sussex, country seat of the Marquess of Quesnay, could not exactly be dignified by the name of ball, though there was dancing, and the sounds of music and gaiety were wafting from the open windows of the main drawing room. It was a country entertainment and the numbers not large, there being only two guests staying at the house at that particular time to swell the ranks of the local gentry.
It was not a ball, but the boy sitting out of sight of the house on the seat surrounding the great marble fountain below the terrace wished that he was inside and a part of it all. He wished that reality could be suspended and that he could be there dancing with her, the dark-haired, dark-eyed young daughter of his father’s guest. Or at least looking at her and perhaps talking with her. Perhaps fetching her a glass of lemonade. He wished . . . oh, he wished for the moon, as he always did. A dreamer—that was what his mother had often called him.
But there were two insurmountable reasons for his exclusion from the assembly: he was only seventeen years old, and he was the marquess’s illegitimate son. That last fact had had particular meaning to him only during the past year and a half, since the sudden death of his mother. Through his childhood and much of his boyhood, it had seemed a normal way of life to have a father who visited him and his mother frequently but did not live with them, and a father who had a wife in the big house though no other children but him.
It was only in the year and a half since his mother’s death that the reality of his situation had become fully apparent to him. He had been a fifteen-year-old boy without a home and with a father who had financed his mother’s home but had never been a permanent part of it. His father had taken him to live in the big house. But he had felt all the awkwardness of his situation since moving there. He was not a member of the family—his father’s wife, the marchioness, hated him and ignored his presence whenever she was forced to be in it. But he was not one of the servants either, of course.
It was only in the past year and a half that his father had begun to talk about his future and that the boy had realized that his illegitimacy made of that future a tricky business. The marquess would buy him a commission in the army when he was eighteen, he had decided, but it would have to be with a line regiment and not with the cavalry—certainly not with the Guards. That would never do when the ranks of the Guards were filled with the sons of the nobility and upper gentry. The legitimate sons, that was.
He was his father’s only son, but illegitimate.
“You are not at the ball?” a soft little voice asked him suddenly, and he looked up to see the very reason why he had so wished to be in the drawing room—Jeanne Morisette, daughter of the Comte de Levisse, a royalist émigré who had fled from France during the Reign of Terror and lived in England ever since.
He felt his heart thump. He had never been close to her before, had never exchanged a word with her. He shrugged. “I don’t want to be,” he said. “It is not a ball anyway.”
She sat down beside him, slender in a light-colored flimsy gown—he could not see the exact color in the darkness—her hair in myriad ringlets about her head, her eyes large and luminous in the moonlight. “But I wish I could be there even so,” she said. “I thought I might be allowed to attend since it is just a country entertainment. But Papa said no. He said that fifteen is too young to be dancing with gentlemen. It is tiresome being young, is it not?”
Ah. So she had not been with the company after all. He had tortured himself for nothing. He shrugged again. “I am not so young,” he said. “I am seventeen.”
She sighed. “When I am seventeen,” she said, “I shall dance every night and go to the theater and on picnics. I shall do just whatever I please when I am grown up.”
Her face was bright and eager and she was prettier than any other girl he had seen. He had taken every opportunity during the past week to catch glimpses of her. She was like a bright little jewel, quite beyond his reach, of course, but lovely to look at and to dream of.
“Papa is going to take me back to France as soon as it is safe to go,” she said with a sigh. “Everything seems to be settling down under the leadership of Napoleon Bonaparte. If it continues so, perhaps we will be able to return, Papa says. He says there is no point in continuing to dream of the return of a king.”
“So you may do your dancing in Paris,” he said.
“Yes.” Her eyes were dreamy. “But I would just as soon stay in London. I know England better than I know France. I even speak English better than I speak French. I would prefer to belong here.”
But there was a trace of a French accent in her voice. It was one more attractive feature about her. He liked to listen to her talk.
“You are the marquess’s son, are you not?” she asked him. “But you do not have his name?”
“I have my mother’s name,” he said. “She died the winter before last.”
“Ah,” she said, “that is sad. My mother is dead too, but I do not remember her. I have always been with Papa for as long as I recall. What is your name?”
“Robert,” he said.
“Robert.” She gave his name its French intonation and then smiled and said it again with its English pronunciation. “Robert, dance with me. Do you dance?”
“My mother taught me,” he said. “Out here? How can we dance out here?”
“Easily,” she said, jumping lightly to her feet and stretching out a slim hand to him. “The music is quite loud enough.”
“But you will hurt your feet on the stones,” he said, looking down at her thin silk slippers as she led the way up onto the terrace.
She laughed. “I think, Robert, that you are looking for excuses,” she said. “I think that your mother did not teach you at all, or that if she did, you were unteachable. I think perhaps you have two left feet.” She laughed again.
“That is not so,” he said indignantly. “If you wish to dance, then dance we will.”
“That is a very grudging acceptance,” she said. “You are supposed to be thrilled to dance with me. You are supposed to make me feel that there is nothing you wish for more in life than to dance with me. But no matter. Let us dance.”
He knew very little about women’s teasing. It was true that Mollie Lumsden, one of his father’s undermaids, frequently put herself in his way and showed herself to him in provocative poses, most frequen
tly bent over his bed as she made it up in the mornings. It was true too that on the one occasion when he had tried to steal a kiss she had whisked herself off with a toss of the head and an assurance that her favors did not come free. But there was a world of difference between the buxom Mollie and Jeanne Morisette.
They danced a minuet, the moon bathing the cobbles of the terrace in a mellow light, both of them silent and concentrating on the distant music and their steps—although his attention was not entirely on just those two things either. His eyes were on the slender moonlit form of the girl with whom he danced. Her hand in his was warm and slim and soft. He thought that life might never have a finer moment to offer him.
“You are very tall,” she said as the music drew to an end.
He was close to six feet in height. Unfortunately his growing had all been done upward. To say that he was thin would be to understate the case. He hated to look at himself in a looking glass. He longed to be a handsome, muscular man and wondered if he ever would be anything more than gangly and ugly.
“And you have lovely blond hair,” she said. “I have noticed you all week and wished that I had hair that waved like yours.” She laughed lightly. “I am glad you do not wear it short. It would be such a waste.”
He was dazzled. He was still holding her soft little hand in his.
“I am supposed to be in my room,” she said. “Papa would have forty fits if he knew I was out here.”
“You are quite safe,” he said. “I shall see that no harm comes to you.”
She looked up at him from beneath her lashes, an imp of mischief in her eyes. “You may kiss me if you wish,” she said.
His eyes widened. What Mollie had denied, Jeanne Morisette would grant? But how could he kiss her? He knew nothing about kissing.
“Of course,” she said, “if you do not wish to, I shall return to the house. Perhaps you are afraid.”
He was. Mortally afraid. “Of course I am not afraid,” he said scornfully. And he set his hands at her waist— they almost met about it—and lowered his head and kissed her. He kissed her as he had always kissed his mother on the cheek—though he kissed Jeanne on the lips—briefly and with a smacking sound.